Remaking Ukraine after World War II

Filip Slaveski is an Australian Research Council (ARC) Research Fellow (DECRA) at the Alfred Deakin Institute, Deakin University, Victoria. An historian of the Soviet period, specialising also in Eastern European and German twentieth century history, he is the author of The Soviet Occupation of Germany: Hunger, Mass Violence and the Struggle for Peace, 1945-1947 (2013).

• Introduction; Part I. The Battle for Land between the People and Local and Central Soviet Authorities: 1. A brief survey of illegal appropriations of collective farmland by local state and party officials; 2. Taking land: officials' illegal appropriations and starving people in Raska, Bila Tserkva and elsewhere; 3. Taking land back: the people and central authorities' recovery of land and prosecution of local party and state officials; Part II. The Cost of the Battle for Land to People and the State: 4. The cost of taking land: the damages caused by illegal appropriations of collective farmland to kolkhozniki, communities and the state; 5. Then and now: the shaping of contemporary Ukraine in the post-war crises; Conclusion; Appendix. Archival source locations and guide for further research.

'Slaveski's monograph … provides a fascinating insight into relations between Ukrainian collective farmers and the different layers of the Soviet state, and how these intertwined with clashes between local, republican and central officials. Slaveski ably underlines the difficulty the centre faced in having to rely upon local officials, who had their own interests and networks, to implement its policies.' Christopher Gilley, Europe-Asia Studies